This world is gonna burn (as long as we're going down)
by InfinityxDanvers
Summary: Julia is injured and Barbie doesn't know how to stay in one piece. They help each other.
_Prompt: Julia tries to tell Barbie 'It isn't what it looks like, I swear!'_

 **So after finishing Under the Dome in three days, let's just say that I'm a little obsessed with 'Jarbie' and that I'm a sucker for angst make out session. Hope you enjoy it and, please, let me know.** **My apologies for any grammatical errors.**

 **Title from Dark Doo Wop by MS MR.**

* * *

"It isn't what it looks like," the redhead starts speaking before her thoughts can connect with her mind, like the old days when her mother had once caught her drawing butterflies on their new apartment's wall or when her former boss discovered she published an article without his previous approval. "I swear. It's not that..." Julia regrets the childish sound of her voice as soon as the words leave her mouth, but it's too late and a stabbing pain cuts off her last word with a tiny whimper.

Barbie hears it and his heart skips a beat — mostly because of what he sees, though, rather than hears.

Julia is inclined above the bathroom's sink at the motel room where they decided to stop by — or maybe that's just euphemism. Where they decided to hide. Her pale face is turned to him and so is a red, red hand that appears to have stolen life itself from her cheeks. Julia is bleeding on her right side and there are gauze pads and peroxide with her, but her hand is too numb when she breathes out the beginning of exhaustion.

For a long time Barbie hasn't felt the urge to punch something so hard that he'd rip skin out of his knuckles, so when his own fingers twitch for being so fucking dumb after the disastrous meeting with Big Jim, Barbie runs to her using his hands to make her sit down. Julia searches for his eyes, biting her lip, but he's too busy analyzing the red angry spot on her right ribs with pumping veins in his forehead. She had cleaned up the wound, but her vision range was not that great and the damage was still exposed as an alarming signal.

After the dome, Barbie and Julia tried to remain as far away as possible from the spotlights and as far away as possible from anything the dome hadn't buried. Outside of the invisbile curtain, they searched for everything when they searched for nothing. The road seemed like a needed idea, rather than an accidental one. But refusal doesn't equal acknowledge and it's a surprise when the prick finds a way through them.

Meeting with Big Jim was always an indication of how far you ran out of luck, like the plagues announcing damnation at the biblical Egypt. So when Barbie hears the shot he already tastes adrenaline, what is strangely familiar. His forearm pushes Julia right to his back and his anger breaks the shooter's finger and septum, leaving the corpse agonizing on the floor.

"Julia..." Barbie calls on his back, but she cuts him with a breathless, confident tone.

"I'm okay." She says and it takes everything in Barbie not to pull the trigger and make a fucking mess out of it.

Danger always seems to find a target and that is strangely familiar too. So they run. They run before the dust reaches their back.

They settle for an affordable hotel after driving for too long, until their limbs and minds couldn't take anything else, and Barbie heads to the reception. No important information and cash only.

The adrenaline doesn't stop because now Julia is hurt and she looks _so_ pale and he needs to concentrate with the gauze pads and cotton balls. He sees his jacket on the floor and it's red too. She got it from the back seat right after they stopped, heading straight for their room. The floor is messy, but she never intended to dirty it with blood stains, as she never intended to tell him something that could be as blank as an eventuality. The road teaches her that invasive can be reckless and to be practical and silent and they both live, even when it means to be silent around him.

Barbie doesn't look at her while his fingers work gently circulating her wet skin. Still, he never truly had to for her to know what was going on between them. Julia feels disappointment and fear so strongly as if it was emanating through her own pores. His palms are careful, but he breathes too fast, too loud and too irregularly and Julia wonders if in any other circumstance he'd still choose to be there, meticulous and quiet, or he'd choose to storm out like the thoughts she could behold inside his mind.

She can look after herself and she can make decisions. It has been like that since the day she had to stand up for what she believed in her line of work. It has been like that since the day they left Chester's Mill and all bullshits behind to burn on the ground. He remembers seeing iron and tasting fierceness when he looked at her as soon as they reached their first destination.

She doesn't say she is sorry and he doesn't expect her to.

They don't apologize for following their guts, never. But then he doesn't fight her, doesn't scream at her, and although they're close physically, she never felt such distance between them. Julia is not sorry for gathering her wounds all by herself, but gazing his dead features with eyes long lost in places she couldn't reach, she's sorry she made him think that was her only option.

"It's just a graze," she says and bites the inside of her cheek, but the only response she gets is a cold airflow.

He still doesn't fight her, but she wishes so badly he would. Maybe they'd be okay after yelling at each other. Anger and meaningless words would warm them up and they would know what to say then because they've learned not to give up without being hostile. Julia is her own and Barbie is his own and they're both silver. But the lump in her throat is still pathetic, egoistic, and the feeling of being trapped in mumbled sentences is always bitter.

"Hold still..." His voice is so weak she is not sure he mutters the words or her mind is playing what it thought was comfort. She obeys anyway and the gauze covers her rib, easing the fire on her right side. Her shirt smells like blood and sweat and the fabric looks lost, she'd probably have to throw it out.

She wanted him to be slower. Seeing him resented was better than not seeing him at all. However, the work is focused and efficient.

He gets up to his feet with bloody fingers and has nothing to say.

"Barbie, I..." She tries again.

But never finishes it as he leaves the room and closes the door.

She doesn't see him anymore when she gets out of the bathroom with wet hair and a new set of clothes and the worst thing is the blank space between her words and her mind. She thought she knew how to deal with hollow, but is a sour and deserved response to the irony inside of her. He leaves her medicines on the nightstand and it takes another half an hour to see him again. His blonde hair is rain-soaked along with his dark clothes. He sees her by the bed, but prefers to treat his damped state than to deal with the unsettling agony dancing on his imagination.

There were millions ways of that bullet to torment him, messing with his brain, and he couldn't help but flinch with every single one of them.

"Barbie, just stop." Julia says when he's halfway through taking off his shoes. "I'm sorry."

"No. You're not." He snaps, grunts and gives her his full attention, urging with his own feelings not to break in front of her. "No lie between us. You'd trust me like I trust you with my soul. That was our deal. We're everything together or we're not a single thing."

"You think I don't trust you?" She says with great disbelief. "I did what I thought was best for our well-being. I saw the opportunity not to take any more risks and I didn't think twice. Is it not what we do?"

"Not with your life!" He voices higher. "It doesn't matter how safe you think it's. If your life is on the loose, all the other possibilities of safe ending are gone. If I can't protect you, all the other risks are already made. How could you not see that?"

He's on the edge and, God, she is right in front of him. All the disappointment and all the guilt he always directed to himself being presenting as an artwork to her.

"You can't protect me all the time." Her voice calm, soothing and the thunder in his minds stops for a while. "You don't need to."

He knows, but he can't hate himself less for it. There's betrayal and sadness and Barbie thinks it's the first time she has seen it all.

He expects Julia to run or to leave him out of the room.

She doesn't deserve ugly and that's what his self is all about. She deserves good, but scars and enemies on his back is all he has to offer. Yes. He expects Julia to run far away from him as they once did with the pain coming from the damned little town. He doesn't wish to burn like the bad remembrances, but Barbie knows he should. He worries that coming this far it'd be too difficult for either of them to make the hard choices. But Julia is the strongest woman he's ever known and he's confused when she gets upon her feet and grabs his cold, shaking hands. She pushes forward and not backwards.

Not always the hardest actions are the right actions.

They weren't always good at leaving things unsaid, but they are good now and it amazes both how unity is such a clear statement. _It's okay, I know and it's okay_ , she breaths the words rather than just speaking because she does want to say, to draw in crayon if needed, that she hasn't felt this safe in her whole life, not with anyone that has ever crossed her.

She does want to say, to scream that she loves him, that he's what she wants and ever asked for, that's he is not only enough as he is more, and she wants it all. _I love you, I love you, and you don't need to be more than you already are_. She kisses him right there and he starts to understand — he hears the unspoken. Still, it fucking hurts and he trembles in her mouth - hurt and fear are so familiar he is not sure it's even going to stop hunting him, like the ghosts of his army's companions with perforated bodies and bloody faces, so badly that for a brief time of his life he remembers worried supervisors, barked orders and a shrink. "It'll eat you up" was the most optimistic thing he heard after Afghanistan. It was never a matter of 'if', but 'when'.

He was sorry for so long, but sorry didn't bring life from the dead and sorry didn't comfort any family.

So he stopped being sorry and started with the hate he knew all too well. But now she has her hands on both sides of his face and he doesn't recall much of this hate. It still hurts, however, it hurts less.

 _Don't do that to yourself. I love you, I love you so much_. The kiss breaks apart then his head is at her stomach when they sit on the bed and he hugs her, both for himself and for her, to the fear so it can go away. He doesn't know if he'd be able to stop because she's the only real thing he's had in so long and he's so fucking tired of chasing ghosts. She grabs him tighter because she needs him too and fear never felt like such a distant realism. As if it wasn't part of their lives now. As if it didn't belong to them. He kisses her bandage like the act could take every pain, their pain, and trauma away. She reads him and strokes his hair closing her eyes.

We're everything together or we're not a single thing.

It's good because he's not hiding anything anymore and, holy shit. He can recognize hope, he can compare hope. But redemption... He wonders if it feels like that, so close and... it seems, it seems right if the answer is yes.

He can't clean his toxic thoughts alone so they do it together.

Every kiss, every moan, every whisper. They make desperation and gentleness mysteriously work together as her tank top hits the floor. He kisses the scar on her chest, then goes for her left breast licking her skin with no rush at all, and then to her neck slightly biting the spot — he's careful, but she loves when he leaves marks if she asks for them. She loves when whatever is carved upon their body is something they chose to be there, sharing space with scars they can not burn. Julia fights not to lean back her head and close her eyes because that's _him_ and hope is just as hot as his breath when he looks at her with his thumb caressing her patched wound. Her tongue grabs his upper lip tasting everything she could and her hands hadn't left his face yet, lingering through his stubble.

She guides them.

She guides them as they suck the same air. When her hands slides his shirt off, he's not apologizing anymore, when her hot mouth hits carefully every spot on his face, he's not hating, when his hand reaches her tight leaving shameless fingerprints all over her flesh laying them both down on the bed, he's just feeling it.

They hold each other like they hold their happiest memories from the allure of the darkness. And after, when her fingernails dig into his back and her leg wraps around him, he moves his hips and they moan together. They clean awful reminiscences and long-term horrors when they go again and they don't say a word anymore. He thanks her for it, like she thanks him for allowing her, for sticking around.

For fighting with her.

When they awake on messy sheets they're still locked together. He smiles at her and it's so beautiful her lungs fail her for a bit.

"Julia..." He starts, but she smiles for him too, her eyes predicting his own words.

She knows and he couldn't love her more.


End file.
